Module 8 Midterm

 

What is the role of writing a literature review in the context of a major research project? Why do scholars expend considerable time and effort required to do this step? The role of a literate review is to provided knowledge to a specific topic, that the literature review is based on. Re-examining the work other people have done in that topic to give them credit on their work or looking at gaps in their research. In the hope of improving something in that area of study. Addressing conflicts that emerge from previous studies, as new things could pop up that could answer previous open questions from that research. It also helps the people have an intimate understanding on the subject they are working on, to improve anything someone else might have missed in that subject.

It is the most important step in a major research project, as it is the foundation for major research projects. Scholars spend a considerable time and effort on literature reviews; because it lets them examine all the previous work that has been done on the subject, and it helps them see if there are unanswered questions, that they can answer now. They could have also found a way to improve on the methods that were previously used, to acquire a better set of data that would help on the previous work already done. It also allows them to further focus on them on subject, as they can see all the previous work people have done, by not repeating work others have done. Enabling them to make sure that the project that they are working is worth all the time they are going to be investing in it.

How did the literature review help you in understanding what topic you wanted to pursue? When I first started to think about what I wanted to do research on for this class… I was lost on what I wanted to research on. I looked for journals on what I wanted to do my literature review on, I started to refine my topic in my mind to something that interested me and can be informative for others to read. Doing this literature review reinforced what topic I wanted to do research on for this class, as everything I read, I found interesting and educational at the same time. Making me feel, like, I found a topic that I wanted to invest my time that I would enjoy doing.

At first the thought of doing a literature review seemed, like, a daunting task that I did not want to do. Spending hours reading and organizing the journals/articles that I thought would help me for my topic; it helped me have an understanding, on how I wanted to pursue my topic. This literature review taught me a lot about the topic that I wanted to research, understanding it in ways that I never would have thought off, I can see why this step is important in a social science class.

Write a 2-3 paragraph “executive summary” of your literature review for this class. Alrighty, my literature review consisted of the political bias in the search results (top) can have on users themselves. Warping their opinion on a subject that they were interested in reading or doing research on. Dividing users into separate groups of thought, when it comes to politics, making a polarizing subject such as politics more volatile to discuss with other users. Making it hard for any user to have a conversation about politics, as their opinions have already been influenced by the search engine (google) or social media (twitter) they decided to follow.

The internet and social media play a vital part in our lives now, that keep us up to date in the world of politics, as it is something that affects us all, equally. There is an algorithmic bias in the search engine (google) that we use or social media (twitter), as well. The more people use social media, as their primary news source the more likely, they will find alternative news sources that are created by private citizens that write opinion-based articles. Most users of google and twitter believe that these algorithms are bias free, as there is no human involvement in them, but there is a bias in the algorithm itself; it hasn’t been well documented or studied, thus far.